TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

The Formula For An Episode Of Murder, She Wrote

My life has changed in many ways since working for my own company, but perhaps the biggest is that I can now watch Murder, She Wrote over breakfast and/or lunch. This is great, but it’s also ingrained the show’s weirdly specific formula in my brain, and now I feel I must write it down. The following is how about 70% of its episodes go – the exceptions are kind of nuts.

Office, day

NEEDLESSLY DICKISH BUSINESSMAN:
Your company is garbage, Desperate! Once I buy it despite hating it, I will change everything you like about it!

DESPERATE BUSINESSMAN:
Go to hell, Needlessly! The merger’s off!

NEEDLESSLY DICKISH BUSINESSMAN:
Without me your company is nothing (but I still want to acquire it)!

DESPERATE BUSINESSMAN:
That’s for me to tearfully acknowledge later and for you to shut up!

NEEDLESSLY DICKISH BUSINESSMAN:
I’m a jerk in my personal life too! (Leaves)

Office, day

REASONABLE SUBORDINATE:
Dammit Desperate, we need this merger or we’re done for!

DESPERATE BUSINESSMAN:
Shut up, closest friend with my best interests at heart! Besides, soon we won’t need Needlessly Dickish OR his money.

REASONABLE SUBORDINATE:
Dammit Desperate, don’t do anything desperate!

DESPERATE BUSINESSMAN:
I don’t have a CHOICE except the one you just mentioned!!

Car, day

JESSICA:
I’m so glad you invited me to Place Where You Live.

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
It’s so lovely to see you Jessica! How’s your book tour going?

JESSICA:
Very well, thank you. I am a literary titan known to most of humanity and my work is to everyone’s taste.

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
That’s great. I just hope you don’t get wrapped up in the FLASHPOINT OF LOCAL TENSIONS going on while you’re here.

JESSICA:
(Raises quizzical eyebrow)

Apartment, day

HANDSOME YOUNG MAN WHO WORKS FOR SOMEONE BUT IS OTHERWISE NOT REALLY INVOLVED:
I love you PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN WHO IS RELATED TO SOMEONE.

PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN WHO IS RELATED TO SOMEONE BUT OTHERWISE NOT REALLY INVOLVED:
Oh, but it’s no use HANDSOME YOUNG MAN WHO WORKS FOR SOMEONE! In some obtuse way this business merger makes our love impossible!

HANDSOME YOUNG MAN WHO WORKS FOR SOMEONE BUT IS OTHERWISE NOT REALLY INVOLVED:
Ugh, you’re right somehow!

Docks, night

SHADY CONTACT:
I got the stuff, where’s the money?

DESPERATE BUSINESSMAN:
I didn’t think this through.

SHADY CONTACT:
Hey, you’d BETTER have my money!

DESPERATE BUSINESSMAN:
I didn’t think this through.

SHADY CONTACT:
You messed with the wrong Shady Contact, Desperate! I will definitely and literally kill you! Not a figure of speech! If you’re murdered soon, it was me! You hear that, witnesses who heard the victim arguing with someone around this time?

Docks, day

POLICE IDIOT stands over DESPERATE BUSINESSMAN’S BODY. JESSICA arrives immediately somehow.

POLICE IDIOT:
Looks like an open-and-shut case, Mrs F. Witnesses heard Shady Contact threatening to kill him, and as a police officer I don’t like to look for further evidence or consider any other possibilities.

JESSICA:
I’m not so sure, Idiot! Can you get me his phone records?

POLICE IDIOT:
OK, for some reason it’s fine for me to share that private data. But I’m telling you Mrs F, this time you’re wrong. I know I have a 0% success rate and you solve all of the 22 murders that happen near you every year, but

Office, day

NEEDLESSLY DICKISH BUSINESSMAN:
With Desperate out of the way, this merger will definitely go through! Yes, I had a motive to kill him alright.

IRRELEVANT CHARACTER WHO LOOKS CONFUSINGLY FAMILIAR:
I reply, but say nothing of substance and never become relevant to the plot, although I look enough like someone who is that you’re no longer completely sure of what’s happening.

Lovely house, day

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
What’s that?

JESSICA:
Hm? Oh, just Desperate’s phone records from the night he died. Do you know, he didn’t make a single call to his wife that night? Don’t you think that’s odd?

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
I like you but no.

JESSICA:
All the same, I’m going to keep looking through these records.

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
Well, this isn’t at all the right context for this phrase, but a rolling stone gathers no moss.

JESSICA:
Moss… that’s it!

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
That’s what?

JESSICA:
The missing piece of the puzzle!

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
What puzzle?

JESSICA:
The puzzle of who killed Desperate Businessman!

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
Please just say out loud the thing you’ve realised.

JESSICA:
I have to get to the police station immediately! (leaves)

JESSICA’S LOVELY FRIEND:
For fuck’s sake, Jessica!

Docks, night

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE is rummaging through a bin at the crime scene.

JESSICA:
Looking for this? (She holds up an earring)

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Jessica! No, I was just… I thought I heard a dog, in the bin.

JESSICA:
I’m afraid it’s over, Someone’s Wife. You killed Desperate for basically the same mundane, practical reason as one of the male suspects, but you didn’t get much screen time so it still seems like a surprise. I found your earring at the crime scene, and when I give it to the police I’m sure they’ll prove it was yours.

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Not if I happen to have a gun on me and draw it now, honestly planning to kill an old lady over some fairly flimsy evidence but for some reason wanting to warn her first!

POLICE IDIOT:
(Emerging from the shadows) Drop it, Someone’s Wife!

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Oh for God’s sake. Why do you let her do these things as a weird piece of theatre?

POLICE IDIOT:
Her chain of evidence is always hopelessly weak, so we just have to hope you’ll either kill her or confess.

JESSICA:
It’s true. I have no reason to mention this beyond simple smarm now, but I never found any earring.

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Then how?!

JESSICA:
Oh, it was quite simple, really. The moss. When I saw you at the funeral earlier, the camera focused weirdly on a piece of moss on your shoe. I happened to remember that this moss only grows in one place in the world, the crime scene, and it only sticks to murderers.

But I had to wait for someone to mention the word ‘moss’ in a different context before I made this trivial extra step as if it was a moment of serendipitous inspiration, which for some reason is how we want crimes to be solved.

SOMEONE’S WIFE, YOU FORGET WHOSE:
Well I’d do it again! In moss-proof shoes, and undroppable earrings!

JESSICA:
Again, I never found an earring.

Always an elevator for some reason, day

HANDSOME YOUNG MAN WHO WORKS FOR SOMEONE:
Jessica, we wanted you to be the first to know: we’ve set a date!

JESSICA:
Oh, that’s wonderful!

PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN WHO IS RELATED TO SOMEONE:
I hope you’ll come to the ceremony!

JESSICA:
Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Just so long as you don’t expect ALL of your guests to survive!

(All laugh)

JESSICA:
Hundreds of people have died around me.

(Freeze frame)